Whatta Fiasco

Thanks to the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, we get to see this movie on the big screen as well. And while Jet Li is a big name draw and does a very good job, it’s the trio of assassins; Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Donny Yen, that really made this movie for me. That and the wonderful visuals. Truthfully, about twenty minutes into the movie I had a sinking feeling that there just wasn’t going to be any more plot than absolutely necessary to provide a framework for the fight scenes. Happily, I was very wrong about that. This movie snowballs like crazy. Go see it already.

It’s sort of a romantic comedy with martial arts fights, chase scenes, and stylish, dancing villains. The final fight scene is a thing of beauty, but it helps to know why the villains are so worried when the durians start flying. I really enjoyed this film.

Horror movies aren’t my usual movie watching fare, but this one wasn’t bad. Nice plot twists with credible red herrings, and at least one scene I didn’t want to watch because of the ick factor.

What an odd couple of days. Monday morning I woke up to a clap of thunder and the electricity going out at our house. It took me a while to figure it out though because the radio was still playing. When the bathroom light wouldn’t switch on I got really confused until I remembered that the radio was plugged into the UPS and that little beep I’d been ignoring was in fact the UPS complaining that it was using it’s batteries. The power was still off when I left for work.

After fencing practice Monday evening we went out for dinner to wait out some of the weather. There had already been tornado warnings for the Topeka area and rumors of sirens going off in Larryville. At the restaurant we got to watch the ominous red radar clouds engulf Eudora as we ate as we talked about old style Italian foil and other fencing type things. But the rain was still coming down hard when it came time to leave, so we did the crawl through the tail end of the storm and got home to find that the electricity was off again. Whee. And then it rained again, even harder, on Tuesday morning when I drove into work, but the lights were on when we got home last night. It wasn’t until after I checked the paper that I realized how lightly we got off though. There was lots of flash flooding around town, with cars getting stuck in intersections and basements getting flooded just a few houses down from us.
Before all the rain started, we spent a part of the weekend doing more work out at the renfest site. We got the strip painted and texturized. We didn’t have to repaint the gazebo after all, thank goodness, although I expect it will need some work by next year. We also got to dig some post holes and place some new posts to better rope off the area. And then learned that Mrs. Maggie has a new character and has been placed right next door to us. It will be nice to see more of her this year. Not that I have huge excuse for not seeing more of her the rest of the year except that I end up doing a lot of (successful) boundary defending to maintain time and space for myself.

Before that was a quick trip down south to visit some wonderful friends. (All hail the joys of gracious hospitality. It’s a skill not often enough honored.) It was a shorter than planned visit but very pleasant all the same. It’s been quite a while since I spent any time in the Tulsa area and I got to see some different parts of it this time. If you’re looking for a coffee bar in Tulsa, I can highly recommend the Gypsy. I hear that it gets positively packed on some nights, but it was relatively quiet when we were there. They have good coffee and sweets, and lovely big seating areas that would be perfect for an after fencing practice, coffee fueled bull session. Too bad it’s a four hour drive away from us!

I didn’t realize this book was the third (with a soon to be released fourth) in a series, but it stands alone quite well. I didn’t think it was so much hard sf as it was an sf thriller, but McDevitt does a good job of setting up interesting scenery. Once the set-up is in place and the story telling kicks into gear, the pages turn themselves. I’ll likely track down some more of his work for the escapist entertainment value.

More Bollywood. More Shah Rukh Khan. Why, oh why? I no more understand this man than I understand Tom Cruise. Or better yet, Brad Pitt. But there he is. And there’s Kajol again, wasted on a role where she is mostly set dressing. Yes, she’s pretty, but she’s downright breathtaking in comedic roles. Think Hindustani Doris Day, only much more so. (No, that doesn’t make any sense.) We only get flashes of it in this film, but the flashes are refreshing. The music is so-so.

Yes, it’s the film that helped inspire Star Wars, but don’t let that stop you from seeing it. It’s neither Kurosawa’s best film nor Mifune’s best role but it’s fun and the comedic sidekicks are entertaining while still providing sympathetic pinnings for the class conflict with the obnoxious princess that never quite gets resolved. Or maybe I”m just reading too much into the film. At least now I can go read up on standard critical analysis of the film, something I am loathe to do before seeing a supposedly important film.

Twentieth century physicists as deities in a religion for those who live outside of gravity make a nice touch in this first novel. There are a few bobbles in consistency and a few too many cliches in setting things up, but the story telling is engaging. I’m looking forward to seeing more from Ms. Mitchell.

August. This is August, isn’t it? And it’s Kansas, right? But the grass is lush and green and growing. And when I drove to work this morning I had fresh coming in the vents of my car… and it was too cold. I had to bump the heat on. And it hasn’t just been today. It’s been this way all week. It’s disconcerting, disorienting. Was I talking about summer putting her stompy boots on last month? I figured that was just a wind up for the real heat. But summer is too busy dangling her toes in the cool water. Weird.

By the way, if you’re the sort of person who can drink a cup of coffee as a late dessert and still go to bed with no problem, think twice before you turn that into a strong French press cup with dark, semisweet chocolate. Either one by itself would have been fine, but both together work some sort of heterodyning voodoo and make you do stupid things like stay up late reading when you need to be up early for work. But it sure tasted good.

So, the sharp wit I’ve heard about from Ivy Compton-Burnett finally shines through. There were still parts of the book where it felt a little like trying to read in a foreign language I wasn’t quite fluent in. But only a few times. More often it was like peering into a closet and seeing something glittering in the darkness.And the characters really shined.

[Brothers and Sisters]